


a brief history of time (a life measured out in coffee spoons)

by thegroovygatsby



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: M/M, how did carlos end up in night vale anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-30
Updated: 2013-08-30
Packaged: 2017-12-25 02:39:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/947624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegroovygatsby/pseuds/thegroovygatsby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You’ve been walking for hours. You don’t know where you are. You don’t know what time it is, but the sky is dark and there are stars. You try to name them, but they are strange and unfamiliar. You put your hand into your pocket and found this journal and a stick of graphite. You’re not sure where the graphite came from but you think the journal must be yours. It has your name on it. You think that must be your name.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a brief history of time (a life measured out in coffee spoons)

You’ve been walking for hours. You don’t know where you are. You don’t know what time it is, but the sky is dark and there are stars. You try to name them, but they are strange and unfamiliar. You put your hand into your pocket and found this journal and a stick of graphite. You’re not sure where the graphite came from but you think the journal must be yours. It has your name on it. You think that must be your name.

_Carlos._

That's a good name.

You’ve been walking for days. The desert is cold at night. It’s a good thing you’re wearing a coat. Not that it’s anything very heavy: it’s a lab coat, and it’s worn around the neck and cuffs. It feels familiar. You guess someone must have worn it a lot. They must have written a lot, too, since the spine of the journal (your journal?) is cracked and it has rings on the cover where a mug of coffee stained it. But a chunk of pages at the front of the book have been torn out, and there’s nothing to hint at what might have been there. For a second, you wonder what it could have been. Then the thought is gone. The sand under your feet has pervaded almost every inch of your person. There’s sand in your shoes; sand under your fingernails; sand in your hair. Your hair is getting long. You wish you had some way of cutting it. When the sun comes up, it’s only going to make the heat worse. You wish you knew where you were.

You’ve been walking for weeks. You don’t remember it ever being daytime, but you know that daytime must have happened because every night you wake up, shivering and damp with sweat. The moonlight is bright enough to read by, and every night you find another filled page in your journal. You don’t remember writing any of those pages but you must have done it, you must have, because they’re covered in your handwriting. You didn’t know you could write in Unmodified Sumerian. You must be pretty smart.

You’ve been walking for months. Every so often when there’s a new moon the darkness will seem to swallow up the sky and you forget that there are stars. On those nights you can’t write anything. On those nights you’re glad you can’t write anything because there are things, unspeakable unknowable _things_ that move and slither and pulse in the darkness. If you wrote down all the things you remembered about those nights, you think, you wouldn’t be able to keep walking.

You’ve been walking for years. The road you’re on is well paved, for a desert road. The town around you is shimmery and vague. You’ve followed the road all the way to a driveway—oh. That’s your car. This is your shimmery, vague driveway. This is your shimmery, vague laboratory.

How could you forget your driveway?

How could you forget your car?

How could you forget your laboratory, with all its bubbling flasks and beeping equipment?

You're glad to be back, you think.

You wonder why you left.

The little radio in your lab is broken. You know that for a fact. The wires look like some animal’s been chewing on them, and the radio itself has never been plugged in. You don’t even think the lab has electricity. But every night, the machine clicks on with a burst of static, and every night the same voice fills up the room, and every night (like clockwork? No. But there’s _something_ about the clocks) the voice welcomes you home.

Days pass. You spend your time “conducting experiments”. Or, at least, that’s what you say when people ask you how you spend your time. You don’t know why you say that. You don’t know why people assume you’re a scientist. It’s probably because of your lab coat, which you have so far refused to take off. The voice on the radio confirms that you are, in fact, a scientist, and for some reason, you go along with it. It’s a nice voice, you think. It’s a safe voice.

Sometimes the voice on the radio says your name, but you’re always asleep when that happens.

Weeks pass. By now, you’ve saved the town from certain doom close to fifty times. Of course, you haven’t really done anything; things just sort of wind down on their own and you have a real knack for timing (there’s something in that, you think. Something about _winding_ and _timing_ and it’s on the tip of your tongue). You try not to leave your lab, but sometimes you have to go out. When you go to Big Rico’s for your weekly mandated meal, you find yourself getting strange stares from Old Woman Josie and stranger stares from the angels sitting at the table with her. You’re not supposed to know about them, though, so you just look down at your food (food lacking in wheat and wheat by-products, of course) and think.

You think that the town maybe isn’t as shimmery and vague as it was when you arrived. In fact, you muse, every time you return to Big Rico’s your surroundings solidify a little more. Come to think of it, you realize, the radio in your lab has been growing steadily louder from night to night and you haven’t touched the dial. You think this is more than a little bit strange. You think this is worth studying. You are a scientist.

You think.

Months pass.

You go on a date with the voice from the radio. His name is Cecil. He’s very nice. You like him. When you’re with him, it almost feels like time is standing still (what? You should probably give that some more thought later). You did some experiments with trees, and you’re really quite glad that Cecil doesn’t know much about science because if he did it would have been incredibly apparent that you wouldn’t know what the scientific method was if it crawled down your throat and laid eggs. But Cecil is sweet and caring, if not a little strange, and when you kissed him you almost expected—well. His mouth was soft and gentle. You’re really not sure why you expected there to be so many teeth inside of it, because it turned out to be a _perfectly normal_ amount of teeth and it was _wonderful_ and you really should have invited him in, but oh well. There would be other dates.

Years pass.

You’ve broken every clock in the house. Nothing, nothing.

There is a man in a tan jacket standing in front of your door. He doesn’t knock; he doesn’t ring the bell. He just stands— _oh no he sees you._

You invite him inside. He steps over the threshold, reverent. He removes his hat. You offer him a cup of coffee, which he accepts, but when you hand it to him he pours the hot liquid out and drops the cup on the floor. You are not shocked by this. You are docile. The man in the tan jacket sits down on your couch and opens his briefcase. A swarm of flies coats the inside but they are exceedingly well-behaved, never once buzzing out of the confines of the carrier, and so you can’t really bring yourself to care. The man reaches into the droning mass of insects, and when he removes his hand there’s something in it. He hands the object to you.

It’s a gold pocket watch. You put it into the pocket of your lab coat without really looking at it. The second it hits the lining at the bottom of your pocket it’s like the world around you has finally snapped into focus. There’s nothing vague or shimmery here, only the town. Only Night Vale.

Night Vale, perfect and beautiful.

The man in the tan jacket has closed his briefcase and is standing by the door. He has replaced his hat on his head and seems ready to leave. You thank him.

“Welcome to Night Vale,” he says in return. He touches the brim of his hat and then he is gone.

Wait—what were you doing? Why is there a shattered cup on the floor? Did someone come over? You shake your head, wandering into your wonderfully corporeal kitchen in search of some paper towels.

It isn’t until a few days (weeks? Months? Years?) later that you realize there’s a strange weight in your pocket. You put your hand into your pocket and find the watch.

_Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick._

You stare at it a moment, rapt. You open it.

The hands of the watch move counterclockwise.

(Tock. Tick.)

You shake your head. Useless, you think. You replace the watch in your pocket and promptly forget about it. You decide to give Cecil a call and see about that second date.

Decades pass. Cecil is still sweet and caring and the number of teeth inside of his mouth has not increased significantly. Your hair is all gray now. Your lab coat is threadbare. You are old. You still write in your journal.

There is only one page left.

As the night darkens, you scribble away furiously in what little space remains. You fill the page quickly, summarizing the events of the day. All too soon you’re left with only enough space for a few more words, and you stop and think about what you should write. In your lifetime, you attended countless City Council meetings, were dragged along to many a PTA sanctioned event, voted at countless mayoral elections, and witnessed Night Vale grow around you. What could you write that you hadn’t written before?

You reach into the pocket of your lab coat absentmindedly and pull out the gold pocket watch you don’t remember ever receiving. The sound of the watch is pleasant. It has been a soft constant in the background of your life. On a whim, you decide to check the time.

The hands are moving backwards. It is almost midnight.

_Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick._

You smile.

_Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick._

You write your final words.

_Tock. Tick._

Good night, Night Vale. Good night.

_Tock._

Your eyes slide closed. There is a smile on your face. There is silence.

The city is shimmery and vague. As Night Vale fades out of existence, you fade with it. In a few decades, in a few centuries, a man will stumble into the city by accident.

His name is Carlos.


End file.
